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Oct 23, 2011

October 20 marked a fairly recent "holiday" of sorts known as Spirit Day, which is a day dedicated to showing support for the LGBT youth, especially for those who are victims of bullying based on their sexual orientation. The day is celebrated by wearing purple, which represents spirit in terms of the traditional LGBT rainbow flag. And it's not something that only gay people should participate it - it's for everyone who supports the idea that we are all equal and we should have fundamental respect for one another as fellow human beings. It's one of many manifestations of a growing movement to offer more support for younger members of the LGBT community including The Trevor Project.

And this week actor Zachary Quintoofficially came out in order to show his support after the news that another LGBT youth, Jamey Rodemeyer, had committed suicide due to bullying.

There are an increasing number of LGBT movements trying to promote tolerate and fighting against bullying, homophobia and the like. There are interesting campaigns that are social network specific like Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook and there are more high profile campaigns like NOH8 (No Hate). All of which are definitely steps in the right direction - gay and straight people working together to promote a greater message of true acceptance of gender diversity and challenging those who continue to espouse a message of hate.

More and more people are standing up to try and remember the basic fact that we are much more than our sexual orientation. This does not define is - people are far more complex than that. While it is part of our identity as individuals it does not define all that makes us who we are and thus we shouldn't be judged based on a single aspect of our being alone.

It's a lot of inspiring work - something that I definitely want to continue to support as much as I can. A lot of these campaigns are built around trying to spread a message of love and greater community instead of trying to force the definitions of gender lines in everyone's faces. You don't always need to resort to extreme rhetoric in order to get your message across. Sometimes you just need to express yourself clearly, consistently and in an intelligent manner.

So this is just a gentle reminder that we're all people, who deserve the same rights as everyone else. Our gender orientation does not make us a completely different class of people nor do our beliefs or likes and interests. We're all human and part of single global community and that deserves an agreement of mutual respect, if anything else.

We're not asking people to love us or anything crazy like that. We just want people to remember that we're not all that different and there's no reason to go out of your way to make us feel that way, or go to the extreme of trying to make us feel bad for simply being who we are.